


Wildflowers Have Thorns

by The_Exile



Category: Tales of Xillia
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 23:57:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15254904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Agria's back and it's probably not a divergent dimension and it's making life very complicated for Leia.





	Wildflowers Have Thorns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tren/gifts).



Ludger had confirmed it: she wasn't a Catalyst. In fact, he couldn't sense one for miles around. Nothing at all felt out of place, nothing moved slightly wrong or looked as though it was fraying at the seams where it chafed with normal reality. No random facts about the world were wrong, dates of events contradictory.

Her story checked out completely. She had been discovered close to death at the foot of the mountain, having survived the fall somehow. She swore she didn't remember a thing, hadn't even intended to survive. Clinging to an overhang, falling in a bird monster's nest, finally developing a modicum of artes designed to protect and heal people, something locked deep inside her psyche, unable to develop through all that had been done to her personality but now dragged forward by the immanent threat of death - it had been some particularly stubborn part of her, a subliminal survival instinct, the same that had gotten her through whatever hellish past had twisted her into... that. 

Wanting to spite Leia hadn't been a good enough reason to allow herself to die, apparently. When she sat and thought about it, Leia always had thought it was a cop-out excuse. This not really knowing either way forced her to live with the same amount of guilt and grief. Besides, if Agria really was that obsessed with her, surely it would have been worth her while living on just to find new ways to torment her.

She'd been different the next time Leia saw her, though, somehow calmer, more whole. The doctors at Fennmont had something to do with this, Leia guessed - there were some new advances in mind-healing artes by now, a few of them even made possible by Jude's own research. Paid generously by an anonymous benefactor who certainly wasn't Gaius, they had done more than just mechanically restore her body to full function.

There was something else, though, a few inconsistencies that had prompted Leia to fetch Ludger in the first place. It wasn't just how sure she had been that she remembered Agria falling to her death. As she had just admitted, the other girl's survival sort of made logical sense, certainly enough not to blame parallel dimension interference. A few other parts of her story didn't quite make sense, though. Leia had accidentally spoken of a few things that had only happened in the divergent reality where she had first met a surviving Agria. The story they were both pursuing as rival journalists; the anti-Spyrix activist groups that Agria had gotten involved with; the monsters that had attacked them on that investigation. Whether or not she was supposed to be alive, Agria certainly couldn't have known about these events if it was the 'real' Agria.

She somehow seemed closer to that divergent Agria too - unless that was just the way she was bringing up the same feelings of desperate hope and longing and an elation she wanted to feel at the weight of so many years being lifted from her shoulders, except she couldn't quite trust the Universe not take the other girl away from her again. She must have accidentally made those feelings too obvious around Agria when she would normally want to just let her lead the normal life she had been robbed of, let her lead any life at all before fate realised she shouldn't be there. She knew she had let something slip because the girl had looked over her shoulder, lounging back on her chair, grinning in that twisted, wild-eyed way that reminded Leia of one of Agria's pet birds, then said:

"You're worried I won't make it, aren't you? That this is all a lie, that I'll be taken off you again. But that won't happen. I'm not a delicate little flower, I'm a stubborn, thorny weed waiting to sting someone, and I'm not going to let you off that easily without having me in your life until you're the one who snaps."

She started cackling wildly at this until she threw her arms backward and fell off her chair with a surprised yelp. She then immediately blamed Leia and hurled insults and random stationery at her until she left. 

Leia wasn't sure why this made her feel so relieved, when this had become a comfortingly familiar scene in her life. She wasn't even the only one of her friends to existentially worry about someone close to them at least once a day. Jude was the worst of them for it.

Then she remembered what Ludger had said to her just before he left and after he gave Leia the all-clear about Agria:

"Just remember that the future hasn't been decided yet, that what we think is a divergence of fate is often just an unexpected outcome, the sort that happen all the time. I can't help you with those, I'm afraid," he smiled, "But I can tell you that I've gone against a fate I thought was inevitable and survived still against all the odds. And you know why? Because someone was that important to me. So important that they'd come back through the cycle of fate again and again. So I'm starting to think that there's some kind of special rule, or maybe an exception to the rules, when it comes to fate and people who are especially important to each other."

As Ludger disappeared down the corridor, Rollo bounding after him and meowing in protest, Leia was left wondering exactly how important Agria was to her.

It was a question she still couldn't fully answer. It was just something that would never be straightforward, ever. Maybe she really couldn't do anything except enjoy every day of this new reality as if it could be the last, like a lucid dream that could fade at any time, not questioning too hard the forces that had granted it to her in case such questioning made the dream's reality dissolve.

No, she shook her head, there was no excuse for blissful ignorance either. Agria would hate that, would probably bite Leia if she overheard her thoughts. If she truly cared about Agria, she would be completely honest about her feelings, about her worries, then they would fight side by side to ensure that such a scenario would never come to pass. Or at least fight individually against the same thing while blaming it on each other. Either was good, as long as they both kept on being the sort of people who could survive the impossible.


End file.
